Remains of Communist victims found

TIRANA, Feb. 8 – The remains of 13 people, believed to have been killed by the Communist regime, were found near the capital Tirana, Albanian media reported Monday.
Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha said authorities would identify the names of 19 corpses murdered under the former communist regime found at a mountain near the capital Tirana.
A man looking for his father found an alleged mass grave at a former army unit area at Dajti mountain.
Authorities will identify the names of the persons executed with a bullet in the head through their DNA.
Berisha told governing Democratic Party lawmakers Monday it was not clear when they were executed.
The bodies were sent for forensic investigation.
All the remains were found in a Dajti resort overlooking Tirana. The guardian of the resort told local media that the area was known as the “execution zone” used by the Communist regime.
“They were all political victims, and sometimes they were executed without the court sentence,” the guardian said.
After World War II and well into the 1980s, Albania’s Communist regime carried out a terror campaign, arresting, torturing and executing intellectuals and political adversaries
Albania’s ruthless Communist regime, which ruled for four decades until 1990, executed, imprisoned and sent to internment camps thousands of people opposing the dictatorship ruling.
Following complaints from the opposition Socialist Party and the international community last week the Constitutional Court reversed a law banning former Communist secret police staff and informants from holding public office or serving in the judiciary, considering it unconstitutional.
The opposition largely blamed the government of trying to pass that law in order to negatively exploit it against political opponents.